LIVE CHAT AT NOON: Do we want police drones in SoCal skies?

The public intellectuals are asking, as Kenneth Roth does in the New York Review of Books, "How should we control the drones?"

But what they mostly mean is: What rules should govern drone attacks by the United States armed forces, or the CIA, on suspected terrorists or insurgents overseas?

What many American civil libertarians are beginning to be worried about is not quite as bad as being wiped out by a drone-launched missile, but troubling nonetheless.

As domestic law enforcement agencies begin to consider using unmanned radio controlled aircraft for various kinds of surveillance, the question is, how far is too far when it comes to peering into our lives? Is traffic monitoring of a Sigalert situation one thing, and a hummingbird-sized hovering drone peering in your bedroom window quite another? Where do we draw the line?

ACLU lawyer Peter Bibring studied physics at Harvard before becoming a civil liberties attorney with a special interest in high-tech surveillance by law enforcement in Southern California. He will join Opinion editors with the Los Angeles News Group and readers such as yourselves on Tuesday, May 14 at noon in a live online chat on the subject of drone surveillance. Come to this newspaper's website at that time with your questions and comments on the topic.